The holdouts against the Sackler deal

The odious Sackler family that heavily promoted the use of their opioid drugs that has resulted in widespread addiction that led to many deaths and much suffering, have been pushing to have the courts sign off on a deal with state governments where their company Purdue Pharma, which is in bankruptcy, will supposedly pay fines that will go towards drug treatment and rehabilitation. The most noxious part of the deal is that the Sacklers’ ill-gotten personal fortunes will be largely untouched, they will not have to admit guilt, and they will gain immunity from future lawsuits by individuals. In other words, they will escape largely unscathed.

At the end of this month, [a New York] court – the second circuit appeals court in New York – will hear arguments over individual liability releases approved by a bankruptcy court charged with distributing Purdue Pharma’s assets. Those releases, another court found in December, weren’t authorized under the law and the plan was reversed.

But under the terms of the now-vacated deal, the Sacker family would contribute $6bn over 18 years to an opioid settlement trust. It’s a situation that angers Isaacs, and thousands of others, who feel that a measure of corporate responsibility may have been assigned, but Purdue’s decision-maker will never be held to account.

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A long overdue event

Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the US senate on a 53-47 vote to fill the vacancy on the US Supreme Court that will be created when retiring justice Stephen Breyer steps down in July. It is quite incredible that it has taken so long to have a woman of color on the bench. I have not blogged about it because it was almost certain that she would be confirmed and there was nothing about her nomination that was controversial, as she was very much in the legal mainstream and had no skeletons in her closet.

But the Republican party of Trump decided to make up outlandish stuff about her . Why? Because that is what they do. And their task of persuading their rabid base that Jackson was unqualified and even evil was made easier by the fact she was a woman and a person of color because we know that white men have the best legal minds and that everyone else must be an imposter, right?
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The cowardly Alex Jones held in contempt for skipping depositions

The conspiracy theorist who created such acute distress for the families of those killed in the Sandy Hook massacre by spreading the lie that it was a hoax and thus inspired his rabid followers to persecute those families and make their lives a living hell, talks very tough. But it turns out that he is, like all bullies, a coward. He has been sued by the families and been ordered by the judge to attend a legal deposition and be questioned under oath but he did not show up, citing vague medical reasons, even though he was appearing on his show that same week. Jones is clearly trying to avoid a legal reckoning for his reckless and hateful instigation against the families. He has offered a settlement to the people suing him but they have refused, demanding that he appear in court.
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The efforts to suppress voting in the US

Pamela Moses, a resident of Tennessee, tried to register to vote, after completing her period of probation for a felony violation. People in that state are ineligible to vote if they are on felony probation. She submitted a document signed by her parole office that said that the had completed her parole. The state of Tennessee argued that she had not, if fact, completed her parole and that she had tricked the parole officer into signing the document.

Mark Ward, the judge at the trial, gave her and her lawyer a scolding for her supposed fraud.

“You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” [Ward] said.

Judge Ward drilled Moses over her past convictions and the fact that she was already on probation when she committed the voting crime.

“After you were convicted of a felony in 2015, you voted 6 times as a convicted felon,” he said.

The hearing turned contentious when Moses’ lawyer tried to tell the court about the probation department’s role.

“Your honor let me school the court for a second,” the attorney said. 

“You need to stop talking sir. Sit down! Sit down!” the judge responded.

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The Trump family’s terrible week

The legal troubles keep piling up for that band of grifters, so rapidly that it is hard to keep up. It is quite extraordinary how almost everyone in the family seems to be made of the same cloth. The only people who have not been implicated in one scheme or another are the youngest daughter Tiffany (age 28) and youngest son Barron (age 15).

On Monday, Trump’s longtime firm of accountants Mazars said in a statement that they would no longer represent the Trump organization and further added that the financial statements that had been issued for the years 2011-2020 could no longer be relied upon. The Trump organization has long been accused of playing fast and loose with the valuation of his properties and this seems likely to be connected to that.
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Prince Andrew settles sexual abuse case against Virginia Giuffre

It appears that the lawyers for both sides have arrived at a settlement that will prevent the case from being litigated in court. Andrew had for the longest time vigorously denied any wrongdoing and vowed to fight to clear his name of what he claimed were false allegations against him by Giuffre. You can read the short statement released y Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies here that says in its entirety:

Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew have reached an out of court settlement. The parties will file a stipulated dismissal upon Ms. Giuffre’s receipt of the settlement (the sum of which is not being disclosed). Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks. It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years. Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.

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Trump’s legal problems mount

For a long time, it has been clear that Donald Trump and his family and associates were going to try and block any and all investigations into their affairs by refusing to cooperate with investigators, forcing them to go to court to get information, and then fighting those legal proceedings every step of the way. Given the way that the US legal system is structured, if you have the money, you can have your lawyers throw roadblock after roadblock to frustrate investigators who may be tempted to give up as the time and money involved mount up.

It is only the government (or an equally deep-pocketed opponent) that can go toe-to-toe against this strategy and two of them (the Attorney General’s office of the state of New York and the Congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021) have been dogged.

Yesterday, the latter scored a major victory when the US Supreme Court by an 8-1 voted denied an emergency request by Trump’s team to block a ruling by the lower Appeals Court that the National Archives must hand over documents to the committee. [Read more…]

Djokovic and the French Open

After being kicked out of Australia for not meeting that country’s requirements for entry, tennis player Novak Djokovic now faces another hurdle. France has just passed a law saying that only vaccinated people will be allowed in public places. The French Open tournament is in May.

The world number one, however, faces more immediate hurdles in his bid to overtake Swiss Roger Federer and Spaniard Rafa Nadal, with whom he is tied on 20 major titles, as he could be barred from the French Open as things stand.

The French Sports Ministry said on Monday there would be no exemption from a new vaccine pass law approved on Sunday, which requires people to have vaccination certificates to enter public places such as restaurants, cafes and cinemas.

“This will apply to everyone who is a spectator or a professional sportsperson. And this until further notice,” the ministry said.

“As far as Roland Garros is concerned, it’s in May. The situation may change between now and then and we hope it’ll be more favourable. So we’ll see but clearly there’s no exemption.”

More and more countries are implementing restrictions on people entering the country and if he continues to refuse to get vaccinated, his participation at Wimbledon, the US Open, and other tournaments could be in doubt.

Given the Australian fiasco, each country will likely be very careful that he meets all their requirements and that there is not even the slightest suggestion that he is being given special treatment or exemptions.

This is a little over the top, no?

Novak Djokovic has been expelled from Australia after an Australian federal court panel unanimously upheld the deportation order issued on him by the Australian immigration minister, Alexander Hawke, thus dashing his hopes of playing in the Australian Open that starts today.

I can understand his family and fans and his Serbian compatriots being upset. But the reaction has been way over the top, with the Serbian government also piling on.

[Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić] said he was sure Djokovic “would have been treated differently if he hadn’t come from Serbia … If he was from another country, the approach would be completely different. Of course people here are frustrated, 90% are on Novak’s side.”

The player’s father, Srđan, said the episode amounted to “an attempted assassination with 50 bullets to the chest”, while the sports minister, Vanja Udovičić, described it as “nonsense and shame, absurdity and hypocrisy”.
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The full sordid web of Jeffrey Epstein is still to be revealed

Branko Marcetic writes that while the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell did not blow the lid off the whole sordid Epstein saga due to the prosecutors being cautious in their efforts to secure a conviction, the process did produce quite a lot of information that did not get much media attention, that showed the web of high profile people who were part of his circle and traveled around with him. He concludes:

The Jeffrey Epstein saga is the story of the world’s most prolific child sex trafficker who operated more or less unhidden for decades, but was able to consistently escape media scrutiny, legal punishment, and, finally, justice by dying before he went to trial. In a normal world, this tale of sprawling criminality and public corruption would be the subject of an intense, wide-ranging government investigation that would expose the conspiracy’s full scope and the identities of those involved.

Instead, information about the case continues to come in dribs and drabs, thanks only to the work of a few dogged reporters and the occasional fortuitous legal disclosure, limited in this most recent trial by the judge’s order to avoid “needless” naming of names, and prosecutors’ decision to leave tens of thousands of photos seized from Epstein’s home by the FBI unreleased. The public may end up having to wait for the civil suit against Prince Andrew or for Maxwell herself to strike some kind of deal to learn more.

Just as with the John F. Kennedy assassination, obscuring the full truth of the crime has only fed the growth of disreputable nonsense like QAnon, which serves to launder and distract from the intimate involvement of elites like Trump in Epstein’s crimes, turning them into yet another culture war sideshow. This is the double tragedy of Epstein’s death: it’s denied many of his survivors full justice, and turned the terrible truth of his crimes into a shield for his fellow perpetrators.

Marcetic thinks that the Prince Andrew case, if it ever goes to trial, may reveal more details.